G1 Time Shenanigans?

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For those of you who don't know, I'm also a pretty big fan of CW's Arrowverse in general, and especially of The Flash and DC's Legends of Tomorrow, both of which bring up the subject of time travel and its potential repercussions quite a lot. Naturally, this got me thinking a little bit in regards to Bionicle G1.

We know for a fact that the Kanohi Vahi is only capable of speeding up and slowing down time (or at least the user's perception of it anyway), but Bitil's Mohtrek does not follow this ruleset, as its primary function is to teleport past versions of its wielder to their current location and place in time, and instead erases their memories regarding that future, but neglects to heal them of any injuries sustained there. So the theory I'm proposing here is this; could it still have been possible that Bitil, or any other Mohtrek wielder for that matter, was capable of secretly manipulating the timeline to their advantage by summoning their past selves and simply finding some way to brand the necessary information onto their bodies for them to act on later?

And if so, could the rest of the Brotherhood have been potentially warned about Teridax's betrayal beforehand, thus changing the outcome of the original G1 storyline?

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That later concept is something I have considered many times before. Any simple instructions like "Don't go to Xia tomorrow" or "Ignore Matau's directional advice" could be etched into the armor around the wrist or something, and BOOM--instant warning.

However, that would create a paradox. Say Bitil called forth a version of himself from the past, wrote "Don't listen to Teridax--stay away from Karda Nui" on his past's wrist, the other would have to notice that information when he returned to his own time. If he heeds the warning, and goes into hiding, then he never goes to Karda Nui and would never partake in the events that made future Bitil leave the warning. If future Bitil never leaves the warning, then past Bitil never goes into hiding.

Either the mask has some kind of safeguard against that kind of paradoxical event, or the description is wrong and it does repair any physical damage done to the user when they've been called forward.

In short, while this could work, the results would be extremely complicated.

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For the record, I am not a scientist, nor do I pretend to be. Since the story of Bionicle in general relies purely on its own unique brand of physics, however, I'm figuring that this explanation will be just as good as any in an effort to take paradoxes completely out of the equation.

The BS01 page for the Mohtrek states that when the user's past self is killed, an alternate timeline is created where they no longer alive from that point forward. Seeing as to how it makes no mention of alternate universes caused by diverging timelines, this seems to suggest that the story still follows the events taking place in the main universe, and that said events are in fact changed instead of being simply replaced. By that logic, the resulting new timeline would simply be the old one suddenly veering off-course from its previously intended path.

Now this is just me relying on my vastly incomplete knowledge of science fiction tropes here, but taking that into consideration, events would likely end up being reshaped to the point where the paradox itself would no longer exist anyway, since past events are still usually always perceived as some sort of straight line. If Bitil warned his past self of Teridax's betrayal, which thus ended his involvement before he could issue said warning, then the timeline would still be changed because of it, but the resulting collapse of the paradox (likely due to the timeline operating under a principle similar to that of a rubber band) would then alter events so that not becoming involved became his new "original" choice, hence maintaining the intended outcome by altering the steps that had previously led up to it.

So in effect, it would be similar to the logic behind The Flashpoint Paradox, in which case the mere act of altering the course of time would then cause its own ripples in both directions, thus in turn leading to even more changes, some of which replicating the intended conditions the original action set out to achieve in the first place as it itself ceases to exist.

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The Kanohi Mohtrek was a bleeding hot mess from the get-go, especially because of things like this. Unless I'm grossly misunderstanding things, using it frequently would cause a virtually infinite memory-wiped wounded Bitils to run around the MU anytime, all the time - and then we haven't even touched the paradoxes.

I really think that mask is the product of a heavy night of drinking when Greg just ran out of reasonable Kanohi ideas, and he decided to run with it.

In-universe, though, maybe the mask does have a safeguard like suggested, and while it never healed wounds, it did "muddy" them up so an impromptu tattoo wouldn't be legible anymore.

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Past Bitils only remained in the present so long as the mask was active, and summoning more of them was known to strain his concentration even further. While it's likely he very well could've pulled off having an army soley consisting of himself, it'd be subject to one giant exploitable weakness (kill one, and the timeline essentially rewrites itself so that it never existed in the first place), and it's numbers would be nowhere near infinite. Also, the memory wipe only occured once his past versions were sent back to their own times, in an attempt to prevent them from exploiting their knowledge of the future. If the knowledge isn't contained in his brain, then it doesn't affect it.

Again, if we're working within the assumption that a Mohtrek user is pulling copies from himself out of his own personal timeline, and we aren't simply switching over to another in some alternate universe in the event that one of them die, then this suggests that time (as it functions in Bionicle, anyway) is capable of both repairing itself and resolving any and all paradoxes and inconsistencies that happen to occur while doing so. Taking that into consideration, some events would then also have to be rewritten in the process, such as the means of their actual death in question, and everything else from that point forward, to account for the fact that the previous timeline from then on no longer exists. So if Bitil were to summon a past version of himself and Tahu was to stab it in the face, then the resulting timeline would also have to rewrite itself so that a past version of Tahu was somehow present in the location in time that Bitil would'e otherwise been sent back to in order to do the deed, as the version of Tahu that previously did so would no longer exist, hence resolving the paradox. And that's just in the event that Tahu was still the one who managed to perform the actual stabbing in question after the restructuring, and that one of the other Makuta didn't end up doing so simply because they were tired of looking at him.

Basically, what I'm trying to say here is this; while Bitil giving one of his past selves a set of instructions to follow would certainly have the potential to null the future that said instructions originally came from, the resulting collapse of the paradox due to the sudden course-correction of the timeline itself would make it as if he originally decided to perform those actions on his own in the first place, thus eliminating both his future self and their intervention while still maintaining the desired outcome.

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I was always under the impression that calling out for a Bitil, let's say, from 5 years ago, would be a lot of work for nothing.

I would assume that Bitil would call out his past selves from let's say, a second ago, or a few minutes ago.

In that way, Bitil can make himself a one man army and give more damage, yet all the damage taken by the differents Bitil would be all given to the original one as the Bitils that are sent back a few seconds in the past do not heal.

Then, if one of them ends up dying, it would only rewrite the storyline of the past few seconds, which would ultimately leads to Bitil's death with more or less few seconds earlier or later.

Ultimately, it would then be pointless for Bitil to send any warnings to his past self from a few seconds, so he would not, so no paradoxes would occur.

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I was always under the impression that calling out for a Bitil, let's say, from 5 years ago, would be a lot of work for nothing.

I would assume that Bitil would call out his past selves from let's say, a second ago, or a few minutes ago.

In that way, Bitil can make himself a one man army and give more damage, yet all the damage taken by the differents Bitil would be all given to the original one as the Bitils that are sent back a few seconds in the past do not heal.

Then, if one of them ends up dying, it would only rewrite the storyline of the past few seconds, which would ultimately leads to Bitil's death with more or less few seconds earlier or later.

Ultimately, it would then be pointless for Bitil to send any warnings to his past self from a few seconds, so he would not, so no paradoxes would occur.

This is honestly how I figured out that he did it. A nanosecond, as small as it is, is still a measurable unit of time. In that case, could Bitil just call up a thousand Bitils who are all pulled from within a microsecond ago?